They fail to see the grace - and hence the proof- of god and God's Love.
As John Q. Public continues to holy spirit mature,they become more impressed by the frequency of statistically highly improvable events, in their very improbability, gradually began to reveal the fingerprints of God were very much at work all along.
The spiritually wise know that grace is real. They also know there was a pattern to those highly improbable events: almost all seemed to have a beneficial outcome.
A synonym for Grace: Serendipity.
Websters Dictionary defines serendipity as "The Gift of Finding Valuable or Agreeable Things Not Sought For.
This definition has several intriguing features, one is the serendipity is termed a gift, which implies that some people possess it while others don't, that some people are lucky and others are not.
Grace manifested in part by "Valuable or agreeable things not sought for," is available to Everyone but while some take advantage of it, others do not.
One of the reasons for the human tendency to resist grace is the we are not fully aware of its presence. We don't find valuable things not sought for because we fail to "Appreciate" the value of the gift when it is given to us.
In other words, serendipitous events occur to all of us, but frequently we fail to recognize their serendipitous nature; we consider such events unremarkable, and consequently we fail to take full advantage of them.
The indications of grace and/ or serendipity as described seem to have the following characteristics:
*They serve to nurture - support,protect, and enhance-human life and spiritual growth.
*The mechanism of their action is either incompletely understandable (as in the case of dreams) or totally obscure (as in the case of paranormal phenomena) according to the principles of natural law as interpreted by current scientific thinking.
*THEIR OCCURRENCE IS FREQUENT, ROUTINE, COMMONPLACE, AND ESSENTIALLY UNIVERSAL AMONG HUMANITY.
*Although they are potentially influenced by human consciousness, their origin is outside the conscious will and beyond the process of conscious decision making.
In other words, true community has come to believe that their commonality indicates that these phenomena are part of or manifestations of a single phenomenon: A POWERFUL FORCE THAT ORIGINATES OUTSIDE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND NURTURES THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH OF HUMAN BEINGS.
Political skeptics and pseudo secularists alike are redundantly inclined to dismiss this force since they cant touch it and have no decent way to measure it,YET IT EXISTS AND IT IS VERY MUCH REAL.
Limited understanding must step it's faith in dealing with paradox.
We want to identify things rationally.
The paradox of Grace is that, on the one hand it is earned plus to become blessed by grace is a matter of choice.
On the other hand, try as we might to obtain grace, it may yet elude us.
In other words, WE DO NOT COME TO GRACE; GRACE COMES TO US.
The paradox that we both choose grace and are chosen by grace is the essence of the phenomenon of 'Serendipity', which was defined as "the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.
Today's point to remember is grace in terms of occurrences that are not only statistically highly improbable can be the ones that have the most beneficial outcomes.
The path of holiness lies through questioning everything necessary for someone to move from a hand-me-down religion to a fully mature, personal one.
Faith believes today that the radical healing influence of grace was manifested to us not only through such wildly improbable circumstances but also through revelation.
Whenever something happens that is beyond coincidence, the chances are great that the hand of God is at work as he spoke and revealed to all still open minded enough to see the tree from the forest wisdom behind the word.
Share: M.Scott Peck, M.D-The Road Less Traveled and Beyond.
THIS EXAMPLE OF GOD'S NUTURANCE IS ALL THE MORE REMARKABLE AS ONE WHO WAS A POOR SCHOLAR IN GENERAL BUT GOOD STUDENT OF THE BIBLE.
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